OF THE PATAGONIANS. 
and oftener on the Terra del Fuego fide, even as low as oppofite 
to Cape Horn. Thefe are frequently an exiled race, unhappy 
fugitives, drove by their enemies to take fhelter from their fury, 
in thofe diftant parts; for fuch is the information Mr. Falkener 
received from fome Indians he met with in the fouthern parts 
of Patagonia, and this will account for the fettled melancholy of 
the people obferved by the navigators in Terra del Fuego. 
Tue fecond clafs confifts of thofe who (in general) exceed 
the common height of Europeans by a few inches, or perhaps 
the head; fuch were thofe who were feen by oan Moore, who 
failed with Gracias de Nodal, in 1618; by Mr. Carteret, in 1767, 
and by M!. Bougainville, in the fame year. 
Tue third clafs is compofed of-thofe whofe height is fo extra- 
ordinary as to occafion fo great a difbelief of the accounts of 
voyagers; and yet they are indifputably an exiftent people ; they 
have been feen by Magellan, and fix others, in the 16th century, 
and by two if not three in the prefent.~ 
. THE fourth clafs is a mixed race, who, carelefs abour pre- 
ferving their generous and exalted breed pure and undegenerate, 
have degraded themfelves by intermixing with the puny tribes 
of the country, and from ‘that intercourfe have produced a mon- 
grel breed of every fize, except that of the original ftandard ; 
 fome few, as if by accident, feem to afpire to the height of their 
anceftors, but are checked in their growth, and ftop at the fta- 
ture of feven feet eight inches, fcarce the middle fize of the ge- 
nuine breed.- But another reafon may be affigned for the dege- 
_ neracy and inequality of fize in this clafs: they live within the 
neighborhood of Europeans, they hive intercourfe with them, 
and from them they have acquired the vice of dram-drinking, 
K and 
65° 
